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Pyotr Belyi
Mausoleo Tipo
"Mausoleo Tipo", installazione in cartongesso, 243 x 240 x 270 cm
2008 | | |
PETER BELYI
Pinocchio's Library
Curated by Olesia Turkina
OPENING: January 22nd from 6 to 9 p.m.
EXHIBITION DATES: From January 22nd through March 22nd
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday through Saturday from 1 to 7:30 p.m.
Pinocchio's Library is the title chosen by Russian artist Peter Belyi for his first solo show at Galleria Pack. The theme of the exhibit the academic genre of modellatura.
Modellatura, which generally included an ideal vision of the future, was an extremely popular genre during the 1920s, an age of grand utopias. Not only did artists invest time and energy in creating models of future cities, but conceived their own artworks as indicators for potential technical projects.
Peter Belyi's "commemorative modellatura," however, casts its gaze into the past, to the 1960s and 1970s, a period that saw the existence of one of the last utopian expressions of our era. The artist's intent is to use this "new" genre of representation to search for one of the paradigms of humanity: hope in the future produced by disillusionment with the past.
The wooden puppet Pinocchio is the project's protagonis, incarnating the figure of an architect obsessed with grandiose projects through which he hopes to transform the world, as well as an indissoluble deposit of utopian ideology present in each and every one of us. Like its hero, Pinocchio's Library is made of wood, and its books cannot be opened. They are solid marker stones of a useless knowledge, inaccessible and impossible to consult ever again. That which was once a source of knowledge has been transformed into an indissoluble deposit of utopian knowledge, a memorial to utopia itself. And yet Pinocchio's Library is rife with the hopes of each one of us and above all, with the fact that one day the wooden puppet will be transformed into a real child.
The transformed Pinocchio now lives among the architectural ruins that gave birth to the social utopias represented by the other installations present in the exhibition - Il mio microquartiere (My Micro-neighborhood) and Mausoleo tipo (Typical Mausoleum) - reminiscent of anonymous building typologies, soviet architecture and 1970s prefab panels.
Il mio microquartiere is made up of fragile box houses built with old photos that have yellowed and faded and were recovered by the artist. Each house has its own story, communicated through a small, barely illuminated window. The memory of that which was once shared space and a quotidian reality for thousands of citizens gets lost, and at the same time acquires materiality.
Mausoleo tipo is dedicated to crises in the protective efforts of those in power. The carcasses of block constructions, which once were used to build entire cities, factories and hospitals, are now put together to create a mausoleum. That which was intended to last thousands of years is transformed before our very eyes into ruins. Ideology, represented in mausoleum form, is transformed into ashes and crushed stone. The mausoleum, just as with ideology, is not eternal if one looks towards a protective utopian future starting from the present.
Peter Belyi was born in 1971 in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg), where he continues to live and work.
His principle solo shows include: Unnecessary Alphabet, Anna Frants Space Gallery, New York, (2007); Danger Zone, Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, New York, (2007); Lenproekt, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2007), SH854, Guelman Gallery, Moscow, (2005); Privatisation of the Chimneystack, New Realms Gallery, London (2005); City Heights, Gallery 27 (2001), Cork Street, London.
Belyi has also participated in numerous group shows, including: Celestial Mechanics, Pulkovo Observatory, St. Petersburg, (2007); Something About Power, 2 man show, 2nd Moscow Biennale, Russia (2007); Border Territory, Mars Gallery, 2nd Moscow Biennale, Russia (2007); Architecture Ad Marginum, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2007); Modus R, Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, (2006); Post Modellismus, Krinzinger Progekte Galerie, Vienna, (2005). His artwork has been included in the permanent collections of: The Margulies Collection, Miami; Murmansk Art Museum, Murmansk, Russia; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Ashmolean Museum, Cambridge.
PETER BELYI - Pinocchio's Library Press Release as pdf-File 60,4 KB |
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